PAN, June 5, 2014

Teenage worker recalls bitter realities of his life after father’s death in suicide attack

Having three sisters and one brother, he earn up to 200 afghanis (3 USD) daily to purchase direly needed food items

By Hidayatullah Hamdard

An eleven-year-old boy who lost his father in the ongoing unrest was forced to work in the bazaar in northern Kunduz province to feed his dependents.

Masoom recalled: “I lost my father in a suicide attack sometime back. I run a handcart to earn livelihood for my family.”

The teenager boy helped people to shift their goods in his handcart and then got paid. Pajhwok reporter interviewed Masoom to know why he was working at this stage.

Most Afghan children are forced to drop from school to work and take care of their families. (Photo: PAN)

The boy recalled his father, a shoemaker, was died following a suicide attack two years ago. Having three sisters and one brother, he earn up to 200 afghanis daily to purchase direly needed food items such as rice, flour, oil, tea, sugar and salt.

The bitter reality forced the third class student to say goodbye to his school. While he looked into people if he could get a chance of shifting goods, he said: “If my father was alive, now I will have been able now to go to school.” Masoom said his mother always encouraged him to do good deeds. He said his younger brother was growing who would share his burden.

The labour and social affairs ministry figures showed half of the country population was children, while more than nine million children go to schools, with 6.5 million at the verge of risk.

The ministry’s officials said 1.9 million of that stood between 6 to 17 years of ages were doing hardwork to feed their families, with 9.3 percent of them were girls. Moreover, dozens of children were begging in Kunduz city.

A beggar child wishing not to be named said financial problems forces him to beg and he came from Nangarhar to Kunduz province a year before.

The 11-year-old boy said: “When we seek money from people, some of them give us but others harshly behave us.”

Labor and social affairs director, Mohammad Zahir Azimi, said hundreds of children were found doing hard kinds of labour in the province. They planned to conduct a survey in near future to find out exact number of children working in Kunduz from other provinces.

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